The European
Commission warned Tuesday that Austria’s plans to build a fence at
its border with Italy in the Brenner Pass posed a threat to the EU’s
guarantee of free movement.

“The Commission is
very concerned,” said Natasha Bertaud, a spokeswoman for the
institution, reacting to reports that Austria was building a fence to
halt the flow of migrants. “For the moment we have only seen
announcements in the press, but if these plans should materialize
then we would have to look at them very seriously.”

“The Brenner pass
is essential for freedom of movement within the European Union,”
Bertaud said, and that “for the time being there’s no evidence
that the flows of irregular migrants are shifting from Greece to
Italy.”

Guardrails at the
Brenner pass have been taken down and road signs will be changed as a
250-meter barrier will cross both the highway and the state road,
Tyrolean Police Chief Helmut Tomac told the Austria press agency
(Apa). The Brenner Pass is a strategic route for commerce between
Germany and Italy, two of the eurozone’s largest economies.

“The
reintroduction of border controls at internal Schengen borders has to
be exceptional and proportionate and so the Commission will assess
any measures that are taken by Austria from the prospective of
proportionality and necessity of the measures,” Bertaud said.

She added that the
European commissioner for migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, was on
Tuesday in contact with Austrian Interior Minister Johanna
Mikl-Leitner about the plans.

Mikl-Leitner told
Apa last week that Austria may close the Brenner Pass if migrant
flows become uncontrollable.

“Italy cannot
count on the fact that the Brenner will remain open if uncontrollable
migrant flows arrive,” she said. “As was done with the countries
on the Balkan route, Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia, we want to
inform Italy too of the measures we will take if there is an
uncontrolled flow of migrants from Italy to Austria.”

In a joint letter
sent to Avramopoulos on Tuesday the Italian foreign and interior
ministers, Paolo Gentiloni and Angelino Alfano, asked the Commission
with “extreme urgency” to check whether the measures are in line
with EU rules. They wrote that the decision to reinstate internal
controls with Italy “does not appear supported by factual
elements.”

Meanwhile, in
Strasbourg on Tuesday the European Parliament approved a report
advocating an “all-encompassing approach” to migration that would
do away with the rules stating that asylum-seeker claims are the
responsibility of the first country where they arrive — a policy
that has put pressure on Greece and Italy.

Last week the
Commission put forward a reform plan that offered options for
reforming the regulation, including an automatic refugee relocation
scheme that would be triggered only once arrivals have reached a
threshold.

Addressing the
plenary session in Strasbourg on Tuesday, the co-author of the
Parliament’s report, Roberta Metsola of the center-right European
People’s Party, said that Europe needs to shift its thinking on
migration. “No more emergency solutions to emergency situations,”
she said. “There is no quick fix to migration; there is no magical
silver bullet.”